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  • EADD Moderators: Pissed_and_messed | Shinji Ikari

The EADD Inspirational and Thought Provoking Stuff Thread

I read his book, "Minds, Brains and Science" when I was a kid. I don't think he says much but I think he's right.
 
Novara Media - Radical analysis and comment

One of the few things that can put a smile on my face atm :)


P O D C A S T
iTunes link

Plain old everyday XML link

they've got video stuff planned apparently

This is the sort of thing that they emit: Part of the reason for writing this was the automatic anti-Labour position amongst many comrades outside of the party, which even includes people who believe socialists in the Party are sowing illusions and thus holding back the class struggle. As Ben Sellers has pointed out, this isn’t new – in the 1930s the Communist International held the view that socialists and social democrats in the established workers’ parties were “social fascists”, thus Communist Parties refused to unite against actual fascists, such as the Nazis in Germany.

Another motivation is the fact that there is a woeful level of political education within the Labour Party, leaving much of the discourse on the party’s policy and positioning to be conducted in elite media by prominent Labour MPs and Lords, supportive commentators, and the leaders of affiliated unions. The more ordinary party members who speak out about their doubts on the turn towards accepting austerity, the more chance that this issue will be sufficiently problematical to require a response by those who act as discursive gate-keepers.

This article is offered as a corrective – but it is an intervention in a debate, not a lecture on what should be done. If the Labour leadership stays the course and begins to liquidate the party, affiliated trades unions could continue to support the party or attempt to form a new mass workers’ party. Either way, there will of necessity be an orientation towards those active in a variety of social movements – and an immediate focus on the four kinds of organisation suggested by Aaron Peters might offer the best course of action for anti-capitalists today.
 
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knock said:
Novara Media - Radical analysis and comment

One of the few things that can put a smile on my face atm :)


P O D C A S T
iTunes link

Plain old everyday XML link

they've got video stuff planned apparently

This is the sort of thing that they Part of the reason for writing this was the automatic anti-Labour position amongst many comrades outside of the party, which even includes people who believe socialists in the Party are sowing illusions and thus holding back the class struggle. As Ben Sellers has pointed out, this isn’t new – in the 1930s the Communist International held the view that socialists and social democrats in the established workers’ parties were “social fascists”, thus Communist Parties refused to unite against actual fascists, such as the Nazis in Germany.

Another motivation is the fact that there is a woeful level of political education within the Labour Party, leaving much of the discourse on the party’s policy and positioning to be conducted in elite media by prominent Labour MPs and Lords, supportive commentators, and the leaders of affiliated unions. The more ordinary party members who speak out about their doubts on the turn towards accepting austerity, the more chance that this issue will be sufficiently problematical to require a response by those who act as discursive gate-keepers.

This article is offered as a corrective – but it is an intervention in a debate, not a lecture on what should be done. If the Labour leadership stays the course and begins to liquidate the party, affiliated trades unions could continue to support the party or attempt to form a new mass workers’ party. Either way, there will of necessity be an orientation towards those active in a variety of social movements – and an immediate focus on the four kinds of organisation suggested by Aaron Peters might offer the best course of action for anti-capitalists today.
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Fuck that after 48hrs straight on Amphetamines, come the revolution comrade
 
mydrugbuddy said:
Its not what happens to a person that counts, its what the person does with what happens.

Im still too hungover to tell if that is a really important and inspiring idea, or of no practical use atall.
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Yes it is. It's the difference between experience and wisdom. Can't remember who said it, someone clever.

EDIT Huxley.
 
Yeah, basically.

It's like people thinking that just because someone is 65 they must be wise. No. They've had 65 years experience. But its what you learn from that experience that is the nature of wisdom.
 
^ if that is the point of the saying then it's not a great saying. A better saying would be "age and wisdom don't always come together" or something like that, not talking about what counts and what doesn't.


If nothing "happened to us", then we could never "do something with the experience". Surely you need both. Surely they both "count" =D

I suppose it might mean "you can't change what happens to you but you can change how you respond to it". Well, sort of. Not 100% right.

Because how you respond to something that happens to you can change that thing. You keep hitting me, one day I hit you back! Now you've stopped hitting me. It's good that you've stopped hitting me. The thing that has happened - you stopping hitting me - counts!

Huxley was an idiot =D
 
Oh FFS knock. :)

I think the actual saying is "experience is not what happens to you but what you do with what happens to you". Which is basically what MDB said, learn from your mistakes.

And there is no such thing as 'nothing happens to you'. Would you like to debate the concept of 'nothing'?
 
my head is too foggy to take your post in knock, the line sounded quite cool when Colin Firth used it to seduce one of his male students, in the film A Single Man which i watched yesterday..Im fairly sure i have the line correct as posted above, or as Firth said it in the film at least, he did say it was a Huxley quoute whilst trying to impress his student.
 
StoneHappyMonday said:
And there is no such thing as 'nothing happens to you'. Would you like to debate the concept of 'nothing'?
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I agree with that, the sum total of the things that happen to us constitute our environment. If nothing happened to us we would have no environment and therefore no means of existence.

I was more meaning it's wrong to discount the "environment" as if all that counts is our response to it. It's simply not true, and the reality of our lives is a complex interplay between ourselves and our environment. Of course there is another way of looking at it and that's that there is no natural division between ourselves and our environment, we are all one, we are all part of the same multi-organism, the Earth (or the universe if you want to go that way).

But look, this is what this thread is supposed to do, provoke thoughts! It's working =D Finally.

mydrugbuddy said:
my head is too foggy to take your post in knock, the line sounded quite cool when Colin Firth used it to seduce one of his male students, in the film A Single Man which i watched yesterday..Im fairly sure i have the line correct as posted above, or as Firth said it in the film at least, he did say it was a Huxley quoute whilst trying to impress his student.
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Yeah my lesson from that would be if you're an impressionable student try not to idolise your teachers because they're often full of shit and will exploit your naïevity to shag you. Sam will explain further :D
 
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Since the beginning of time (if there was one) things have been reacting to a cause, which was a reaction to a cause, which was the reaction to a cause, etc, etc. Everything that has happened happened because what happened before that happened - happened. Whatever happens in the future was always going to happen. If you could travel back in time but not alter it in any way (impossible but bare with me) then things would play out in EXACTLY the same way.. There's no reason it wouldn't.

Ignoring the subatomic particles for a second;

The architect for your brain; your DNA. It gave you your natural instincts (to cry, to suckle, etc), ability to learn, remember, feel, etc. Step off of the vessel of DNA coding only and we are immediately hammered by our environment. The brain is moulded by what you see, smell, taste, hear and feel. Moulded by the vision of red, the feeling of laying on your stomach, the sound of the traffic outside.. EVERYTHING. None of this is within your control. You are literally an empty vessel being moulded by external stimuli (using the DNA decided structure). We are literally a product of our environment making an impression on a complex network of cells of which started as a canvas designed by a strip of chemicals all lined up just right. You think the way you do, act the way you do, talk the way you do and do the things you do because you have been moulded to be this way. Do you cause your brain to do what it does or does you brain cause you to do what you do.. Where did the very first makings of a conscious thought come from. If you think to yourself "Let's see what's on the news" .. what consciously, immediately precedes the thought.

The greatest illusion in existence - free will.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=...A#v=onepage&q=freewill is an illusion&f=false
 
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If everything was as you say (and excuse me if I've misunderstood from a very quick reading) then how do you account for different reactions to identical situations?

DNA is not everything. Consciousness is the least understood concept in science.

We are condemned to be free - Sartre.
 
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